Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Trump and Sanders: Entitlement populists

In the early 1930s, American
politics was in the thrall of a populist. Huey Long, a US Senator from
Louisiana was preaching a successful socialist message to America. During
the Great Depression his call to “Share the Wealth” and “Every Man a King” resonated with the public. He offered a social welfare system for a public
facing brutal fate of unemployment, sickness, and hunger. Long never achieved his
vision, though, he was assassinated in 1938. His ideas lived on as Franklin
Roosevelt borrowed them for his own. Lyndon Johnson continued that trend as the
Great Society programs used government social welfare to addressed historical
inequalities. The cost, though, was to make the people depend on the government
for help. The federal government, it appeared, would replace self-government.

What
are Trump and Sanders offering?

Trump and Sanders are in their
own way populists,[1]
America is different. It is wealthier, healthier, better educated and more
deeply involved in the world. Their populism appeals to something created by
Long, a social welfare culture of entitlement. They preach entitlement populism
to a public who want what they believe they are entitled to have. They are not
campaigning on clean water, Flint, or better education, Chicago’s failed public
school system, but on the resentment born from the belief that the entitlements
reserved to the few are to be enjoyed by the many. However, this sense of
entitlement is not found in the working class, the people being nickel and
dimed to death by the globalization. Instead, the sense of entitlement is
greatest among the elite.

The
Harvard Grade vs the Mansfield grade.

The entitlement resentment
seeping out from America’s elites trickling into the public is what Trump and
Sanders have preached. We have defined entitlement downward. Consider the
average grade at Harvard University is now an A. Every student is not only
above average they are superior. No one ever fails a course. Moreover, it is
not so much that the students are smarter, work harder, or have better
resources, it is that they lobby, cajole, if not coerce professors for their
grades. The students are not the main lobbyists, it is their parents who place
this pressure on professors and the institution. Consider the case of Harvey Mansfield, who one would expect as a staunch defender of virtue. Instead of
standing up to this system and grading his students as they deserve, Mansfield provides two grades. The first is the Harvard grade, an A, he gives to students
so they are not disadvantaged relative to the other students. The second is the
Mansfield grade. This is the grade they deserved. Aside from the honesty, which
is laudable, one has to ask where is the courage of such behavior or the
public defense of virtue? If a man as powerful and experienced as Harvey
Mansfield cannot stop this entitlement, who will? The elite institutions
no longer defend the academic standards for they know they are in a business.
The American university, that produces the elites, no longer shapes their
character to virtue or service. Instead, they shape their students to a life of
entitlement.

Trump
and Sanders make entitlement populism available to everyone.

We can see that Trump and
Sanders appeal in such a system. They offer an answer to the public. Who will
pay for this unfairness? Someone else, preferably foreigners. Trump and Sanders
offer the “truth” to the American public. They will “tell it like it is.” Yet,
they only preach entitlement. They succeed in this because they know that the establishment
candidates cannot offer anything new. The establishment candidates cannot even
appeal to populism for they are part of the entitlement establishment. They are
part of the problem, just a different version of the same issue. They cannot
reform the entitlement system for that is why they exist. They have succeeded to
the extent that they have captured, exploited, and profited from it. Trump and
Sanders do not require the voter to demonstrate self-governance, one is only
required to show entitlement.

Can
any candidate reassert America’s belief in self-government?

We yearn for a candidate who
can help the public understand that responsibility, service, and duty can renew
America. We need a president who will reassert the proper relationship between
we the people and the government. In the choice between self-government or
entitlement, what will you choose? What have you chosen?

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The Reform Club, c. 1915

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